This is a question I've had since I first played this game, maybe twenty years ago. I would say that it is random, given the nature of the game. However in my experience; the O-blocks never come alone (after you get one, the chance of getting another seems more likely). I also feel that you get the I tetromino just after you made a mistake.

I've been googling this for quite some time and haven't found a conclusive answer. Can somebody please help me? I've only played the game on the original Gameboy.

The perception of getting multiple O blocks in a row or getting I after making a mistake is probably confirmation bias - these situations are annoying, so you notice when they happen. (Unless you're playing Bastet)
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Random832Apr 9 '12 at 12:40

In the version I've played most the ---- block is much less frequent than the others, which makes it impossible to play perfectly. Very annoying.
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Matthew ReadApr 9 '12 at 20:06

For what it's worth, once when playing on a PC back in the day, I got a run where it gave me two ---- blocks, followed by another piece, then two more ---- blocks... It was at the highest speed setting. I think I eventually got bored and quit. Must've been a weird fluke in the programming.
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KyralessaApr 9 '12 at 23:47

4

As a species, we are notorious for spotting patterns where none exist. If you do some googling, you can find plenty of examples of people convinced that random events in games (especially online poker) are biased against them, or that popular and well-studied random number generators do not work correctly. There is a long SO thread, Need for predictable random generator, that discusses this issue, with examples of not-quite-random generators used in games, that seem 'fairer' than the real thing.
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JamesApr 10 '12 at 12:37

I'm aware of the human nature in this context. I was just wondering about maybe in this case I was right or not.
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LexApr 10 '12 at 13:34

2 Answers
2

This is kind of a vague question and the primary answer is going to be equally vague: it depends on which Tetris you are playing.

More elaborately, every different version of Tetris will have its own block choice algorithm. The ones I've most commonly heard about are a "true" random generator that doesn't make any kind of judgement, a "fair" generator that generates random sequences of all seven blocks (so you /will/ get every type of block equally often, but the order in which you get the blocks within a 'batch' of six will vary)...

... And then there is Bastet, or "Bastard Tetris", which distinguishes itself by having an algorithm that chooses the worst possible block with malice aforethought.